The Romantic: William Boyd

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But then, a few chapters later, he decides that, “in a bizarre, paradoxical way, he had the sensation that his life was only just beginning”. Yet Boyd’s focus on Romanticism itself is perfunctory, and he is generally more interested in the poets’ famous libidos than in any literary dimension of their lives. Not having enough information to complete a biography William Boyd has written a fictional account of his life based on that material. We honour Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' continuous connection to Country, waters, skies and communities.

William Boyd at his boy’s own, balloon-flying, continent-hopping, historical name-dropping Boydiest.This marriage between the intimate and the epic continually produces striking vignettes that illuminate the wider narrative.

Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Unfortunately Cashel Greville Ross doesn’t have the charisma of Boyd’s earlier “whole-life” heroes – or heroine, in the case of Sweet Caress.

From time to time he supplements this work of the imagination with footnotes such as you commonly meet in – well – a biography. The items listed by ‘WB’ in his ‘Author’s Note’ – a musket ball, a fragment of a Greek amphora, a crinkly lock of hair – all find their place in the tale of this 19th-century adventurer, lover, traveller and author.